Chapter 5: Erek

About half an hour later, Tobias flew in again, followed by a boy a few years older than me.

"Hey, you must be Max. Nice to meet you. Tobias told me about you. I'm Erek, one of the best informants in the world, possibly the galaxy. These guys are lucky to know me." He seemed good natured enough, and stuck his hand out. If there's one thing that I've learned since I was kidnapped though, is not to trust people at first sight. Tentatively, I shook his hand. After not receiving an electric shock of any kind, I shook it a bit harder.

"So what makes you such a good informant? If what they've told me is right, a Yeerk can access any memory it likes once it's in your head. How is it that you guys are still here?" I asked. Jake spoke up, a slight smile forming on his face.

"Erek, I think it's time to show Max who you really are." What happened next made me almost jump out of my skin. Where Erek had been standing only a moment ago was an exact copy of myself. Startled, my wings shot out, making me instantly look twice as big.

"Hey Tobias, look. She's doing that thing you do when you get knocked unconscious," said Marco with a chuckle.

< I told you, that's not me, it's the hawk. I guess she got some new instincts when she got the wings. >

"'She' is right here you know. You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here." Folding my wings back in, i turned to my 'clone.'

"How can you do that?" Erek changed a few more times into various people, including the Vice President and Elvis before turning into some sort of android.

"This is who I really am. As you can probably guess, I'm not exactly from around here, but I've lived hundreds of lifetimes here on Earth. What you saw is how we manage to remain hidden. Holograms that are centuries, if not millennia away from even the Andalites. Our creators crash landed on Earth thousands of years ago. You're looking at someone who helped make the pyramids. We may have given the human race a bit of a helping hand over the centuries, but we're programmed to be nonviolent. The Animorphs helped me remove that limitation once, but it wasn't pretty. So, yeah. That's basically how I fit into the whole picture. Any questions?"

"Um, how do we get into the Yeerk pool? They've sealed all the ones we've ever used and been really careful not to let us find any others," stated Rachel.

"You won't find them from the air anymore. They've linked them to the subways. The disabled toilets are actually drop shafts that activate when you push a hidden button behind the toilet bowl. Kinda humiliating for the host really." Erek scrunched up his nose, or at least made the hologram do it. "A bit disgusting too. Anything else?" I looked around to see the others shaking their heads.

"Thanks for that Erek. We owe you one," said Jake.

"Any time. We owe you our lives, and if it helps take down the Yeerks, we're there." Erek smiled a little, almost sadly. "I mean, as much as we can, anyway. I'll see you around at school." My life has definitely taken a turn for the weirder these last few months.